Walter Salles,whose Motorcycle Diaries screens incompetition in Cannes today, is to make a low budget football-themed film forDonald K. Ranvaud's new production and sales collective, Buena Onda.

Salles willco-direct with Daniela Thomas with whom he made Foreign Land. The film, set in Sao Paolo, will tell of four youngbrothers from an impoverished background who try to break the social apartheidin Brazil. One of the boys tries to make it out of the ghetto as a professionalsoccer player at a minor league Brazilian club.

The Braziliandirector estimates that there are three millions kids who try to break intoprofessional Brazilian soccer every year. "And only 300 make it'it's a prettyinteresting world to look at, very complex and cruel at the same time," he commented.

Salles also paidtribute to Ranvaud's attempts to support new Latin-American cinema.

"Latin-Americancinema is so fertile today but it is still very difficult to put filmstogether, especially for first or second-time directors'what Donald is tryingto do is to help young (Latin-American) filmmakers to express themselveswithout having to swim so much against the current."

Buena Onda iscurrently developing new projects from, among others, Fernando Mereilles,Guillermo del Toro, Julie Delpy, Alberto "Chcicho" Durant, Pablo Trapero, SimonChanning Williams, Eliseo Subiela and Roberto Lanza.

Salles has alsocast fresh light on why MotorcyleDiaries is screening in Cannes rather than Berlin (as originally mooted.) Hewas offered a Sunday slot at the Berlinale which he couldn't attend. He askedfor the film to be switched to the Saturday. "Unfortunately it (the slot) hadalready been given to Ron Howard. Apparently, it (Howard's The Missing) couldn't be moved."

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